What a carve up

Ancona

I am here on a pilgrimage, honouring the descendants of this greatest of Italian towns, men like Galileo, Michelangelo, Dante and, of course, Matthew d’Ancona, considered among those in the know the greatest Anconan of them all. Just kidding. I’m in Gstaad, and just did three runs before breakfast, because the plebs have arrived for the high season and the slopes are as crowded as the mosques in Tottenham during Ramadan. The trick is to wake up early, put on the boots, ski for about an hour, and then head for home. Easier said than done, needless to say. At my age the hangovers are terrible, but the mountain air does help. Mind you, what’s good about Gstaad is that very few people ski. But, when the schools are out for mid-term, every snow boarder west of Tehran seems to end up in Gstaad, and snow boarders are to us skiers what Danish cartoons are to Abu Hamza.